The heck with all the good that we have done in Iraq; instead, against every principle of liberal thought, the actions of a handful of butthead MPs just invalidated over two hundred years of history  nay, the entire two-thousand years of history since the death of Christ  which was, of course, exclusively the fault of Americans.

At this point all I can do is laugh. These people don't want to live, they don't want to carry this civilization into the future  they don't want to give it even as long as the Romans gave theirs. They had 800 years  we don't even get to make 250? Sometimes I think that the Baby Boomers not only want to spend all the money before they go, they want to take the civilized world down with them. And I am nagged by the feeling that even our government is sliding closer and closer to embracing this viewpoint  witness the grovelling before the entire Muslim world today for something that, should it have been done by military personnel in, say, Syria, would have been considered four-star fine treatment.

My take on this is simple: We owe apologies, and perhaps damages, to the prisoners who were mistreated. To most of the rest of the world, which has shoved its collective nose into this matter for no other reason than because it can, we owe nothing. To the Arab world, which routinely pulls crap far worse than anything we did, we owe less than nothing.

witness the grovelling before the entire Muslim world today for something that, should it have been done by military personnel in, say, Syria, would have been considered four-star fine treatment.

This is my favorite line of argument. That as long as we can hold up on conduct as being just this side of the worst of others then we are still ok?

You can't have it both ways. You can't on one hand argue that our moral righteousness validates our actions then say on the other that we can put that morality on a sliding scale.

The institutional thinking that fueled Saddams actions fuel ours. Its not evil. We can justify cruelty against another human as a "necessity" and even a desired goal in the context of a larger "vision".

So everything is "ok" as long as we are not as bad as others have been? What crock is that?

Maybe I haven't gotten the full story on the abuses, but for the most part, they didn't appear to be appreciably worse than those submitted to willingly by college frat pledges.

These pranks must have been made really terrible because there was no alcohol involved, I guess.

Posted by: unimpressed at 1:03 PM on 7 May 2004

That's the official Limbaugh line, anyway. Of course, Islam is heavily into that whole "shame" business; the sort of thing that wouldn't faze a kid from the Delta House would bring abject humiliation to Muslims.

Then again, it's not like we popped open a bag of pork rinds and had a cocker spaniel deliver it to them.

Its perfectly fair to point out the hypocrisy of people that only hurl their indignation in your face when its serves their purpose. However, you should be an equal opportunity "pointer". Even if doing so might get you tarred as an America Hater by the very same people that you now seem so found of quoting.

Sadly it seems being a succesful blogger means pandering to the Kool Kids. Or worse you could practice your critical thinking skills and get labeled a "liberal", which is code for "can be safely ignored".

Are you familiar with Marx at all, or are you just parroting what others have fed you?

Just wondering, feel free to say "as a matter of fact I have studied his theories and found them to be based on faulty reasoning" or "his basic analysis is correrct but he loses credibilty when he starts proposing solutions" some other such comment. But please tell me you know what you're talking about...